Martin Plaut posted: " Source: Human Rights Concern - Eritrea 7 September 2023 Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of Eritreans have fled to escape from severe human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, as has been documented by the UN Com" Martin Plaut

Source: Human Rights Concern - Eritrea

7 September 2023

Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of Eritreans have fled to escape from severe human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, as has been documented by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea. 

Eritreans continue to flee indefinite military conscription, religious persecution, and political repression, and seek asylum across the world. 

Those who remain in Eritrea live in a climate of fear, oppression, and with severe restrictions on their daily lives, including on the right to food, to move, and to assemble. 

Those who have managed to flee the country still face intimidation and extortion from the representatives of the Eritrean government abroad. They have family members who are still in Eritrea, and who remain vulnerable. They are directly impacted by the activities of Eritrea’s embassies in the respective countries that they live in. These activities include extortion, and threats and intimidation aimed at preventing mobilized and organized opposition against the draconian policies of the Eritrean Government. 

The Eritrean Government, through its diplomatic missions, has for a long time, engaged in suppressing diaspora activism through transnational repression, aimed at deterring, silencing, and punishing those engaged in the struggle for human rights. 

Most Eritreans in the diaspora are survivors of human rights abuses at the hands of the Eritrean Government who have managed to escape and secure safety in Western democracies. Many are desperate to use their newfound freedom to voice their concerns over the continued human rights abuses affecting their families, and Eritreans in general, including by raising awareness about the Eritrean Government abuses and calling on host countries’ governments and international institutions to pressure the regime in Eritrea to stop these violations.

Meanwhile, the Eritrean Government, through its agencies and embassies abroad, has continued to target diaspora activists, going so far as using their supporters to threaten their physical safety. Eritrean Embassies and other representations abroad have been utilized, predominantly, to surveil and monitor the activities of Eritrean asylum seekers and the regime’s opposers, refusing consular services, controlling, indoctrinating and extorting. 

Crucially, Eritrean Embassies also regularly organize political community events aimed at raising badly needed foreign currency. These regularly held community and cultural events are critical for the Eritrean Government to garner popular and financial support. 

It is worth pointing out that, the money generated from such ‘community and cultural events’ is never used to benefit the communities, but is siphoned off into government’s coffers and used to empower the regime to maintain its grip on power and continue repressing the Eritrean people inside the country.

Many of those who participate in these events are asylum seekers who claim to have escaped repression at the hands of the Eritrean regime and sought protection from their host countries. They are essentially supporting the very regime they sought protection from.

Against this backdrop, many diaspora activists have started working to ensure the so-called ‘community and cultural events’ that are organized by the Eritrean Embassies are stopped. To this end, they have alerted host countries’ governments asking them to reject requests for permits for such ‘community and cultural events’, and in many instances they have succeeded. 

The Eritrean Government has responded to such efforts by Eritrean diaspora activists by encouraging violent response, going as far as to organize and arm its loyalists. 

The recent violence in Tel Aviv, Israel, and the response from the Eritrean Embassy in Israel, has demonstrated that the Eritrean government intends to pour gasoline on the fire by denying that those opposed to it are Eritreans. The truth is that everyone opposing or supporting the Eritrean government in Israel are Eritreans who fled persecution, and who took risks to trek a dangerous and perilous journey from Eritrea to Israel to seek asylum and protection. It is appalling to see those who have claimed persecution supporting the very regime that persecuted them and that continues to violate the rights of the entire Eritreans inside the country.

It is also worth pointing out that the Eritrean Embassy in Israel has hired lawyers to represent its loyalists who partook in the recent violent clashes in Tel Aviv, while calling the activists on the other side ‘hooligans’ and ‘motley group’.

While condemning the violence, it is also imperative to remind host countries, and in this instance the Israeli Government, to appreciate what the root cause is, and who the genuine asylum seekers are. The Eritrean Government through its embassies and agents should not be allowed to intimidate, extort, and threaten Eritreans who have fled its draconian rule in the very places they have sought protection in. 

We also call on host countries to enforce their asylum laws against those who explicitly provide material and political support to the very regime they claim to have fled from. ------
Human Rights Concern - Eritrea (HRCE)

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.+44 7958 005 637

www.hrc-eritrea.org

Martin Plaut posted: " Source: Ha'aretz Israel has had diplomatic relations with the autocratic Eritrean regime for three decades. But security ties have been kept secret, and most of what in known about them are due to foreign media reports whose veracity is debatableShare" Martin Plaut

Source: Ha'aretz

Israel has had diplomatic relations with the autocratic Eritrean regime for three decades. But security ties have been kept secret, and most of what in known about them are due to foreign media reports whose veracity is debatable Share in FacebookShare in TwitterShare in WhatsApp

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-09-03/ty-article/.premium/tel-aviv-riots-put-spotlight-on-israels-covert-ties-with-eritreas-dictator/0000018a-5a36-d477-af8f-fa7e3a590000">Send in e-mailSend in e-mailSaveSave article to reading listZen ReadPrint article

Eritrean protesters clash with Israeli riot police in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Saturday.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg /APAmir Tibon

Sep 3, 2023 12:26 pm IDT

The violent clashes in Tel Aviv over the weekend between supporters and opponents of the regime in Eritrea, and between many of them and the Israel Police, have pointed a spotlight on the diplomatic and security ties Israel maintains with the African country.

Diplomatic ties between the two countries have existed for three decades and are relatively open and aboveboard. But there is a security element that has been shrouded in secrecy; most of what is known about it is from foreign media reports, whose reliability is debatable.

Eritrea has an embassy in Israel, but does not currently have a permanent ambassador – a temporary appointee fills the role with a small staff at his side. The Israeli embassy in Asmara has been unstaffed for years, among other reasons because Eritrea closed its borders during the COVID pandemic.

“Quite a few foreign embassies are in the same situation,” a Foreign Ministry source knowledgeable about the situation told Haaretz.

The two countries formed diplomatic relations in the 1990s after Eritrea became independent. Since independence, the country has known only one ruler, the dictator Isaias Afewerki, who turned the country into one of the most isolated and totalitarian states in the world today. Nevertheless, Israel maintained ties with Eritrea over the years both on the diplomatic and security planes. At the same time, thousands of Eritreans fled to Israel, many of them trying to avoid being drafted.

In 2019, the Supreme Court rejected a petition calling for the Israeli government to release a Foreign Ministry paper detailing human rights conditions in Eritrea. The paper could have played a role in determining the status of Eritrean refugees in Israel, but the justices accepted the government’s position that making the document public would harm bilateral relations.

The court’s ruling provided a rare peek into the relationship between Israel and the murderous regime in Eritrea, which most Israelis are unaware of.

Reports in the foreign media alleged, among other things, that there was an Israeli base in Eritrea, that the Israeli Navy operated in its Red Sea territorial waters and that Israel has listening posts in the country that provide intelligence on countries in the region. No official Israeli source has ever confirmed those allegations.

In 2017, the Houthi rebels in Yemen threatened to attack “secret bases” that Israel supposedly operated in Eritrea. It should be noted that Israel supported Ethiopia when it was fighting Eritrean rebels seeking independence, but that didn’t stop Israel and Eritrea from cooperating after the latter won its independence.

A U.S. State Department report has described the difficult conditions prevailing in Eritrea, including disappearances, torture and particularly cruel punishment of regime opponents. The country's judicial system is entirely subordinate to Afewerki and its army makes use of child soldiers. The European Union imposed sanctions on the regime in the country in 2021 following its persistent violation of human rights.